Unheralded Carpentier still endures despite the odds

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. -- Patrick Carpentier isn't supposed to be here.

Not at Watkins Glen International racing Sprint Cup cars, at least. This is a guy who two years ago was all but retired, spending his time flipping houses and building cabinets while his wife studied for a real estate license. This is a guy whose most successful days as a driver came on a Champ Car circuit that doesn't exist anymore. This is a guy who was almost an afterthought in the great migration of open-wheel racers to NASCAR, who was virtually eclipsed by men with Indianapolis 500 titles and Formula One world championships on their resume.

And yet Carpentier -- despite an unstable sponsorship situation and a low owner points standing and a learning curve as steep as the hill that this legendary old road course sits on top of -- is still here. Jacques Villeneuve has made only cameo appearances in NASCAR. Dario Franchitti's Sprint Cup effort has been shuttered due to sponsorship issues. But Carpentier, a 37-year-old whose last victory on a major circuit came in 2004, is still smiling, still learning, still holding fast to the belief that he can make it in a series he thinks he was destined to compete in all along.

"I still remember it like it was yesterday, last year when I sat in the Nationwide car for the first time, it just felt like home," Carpentier said, remembering his 2007 debut at Montreal. "It just felt like, that's me. That's what I should have been doing. I have so much respect and love for the sport, I think that's what is helping me out a lot. Often people hire people for the results they have or the tests they have, but they forget the desire and passion they have to succeed. And honestly, I don't think there's another guy who came in who has as much desire as I do to succeed."

That desire is palpable, evident in the tenor of Carpentier's voice, in the way he studies this sport like a law student studying for the bar exam, in the way he's wrapped his arms around NASCAR and completely immersed himself in this effort. He badly wants this, and it shows. His switch from open-wheels to stock cars wasn't rash or impulsive or borne of outside circumstances. He didn't follow a trend. Carpentier spent five years trying to break into NASCAR, competing in a Turkey Night sprint car event in the hopes of earning a place in one of Jack Roush's gong shows, racing for free in a Canadian stock-car series rather than take a lucrative offer to sub for Franchitti in the Indy Racing League after the Scot was injured in a motorcycle accident in 2003.

He was hooked after that first night, when he went from the back to the front to the back to the front again, and crossed the finish line at Ontario's Cayuga Speedway sideways and screaming with glee. These days he takes meticulous notes each weekend on his laptop computer, entering little tricks and strategies he'll review the next time he visits each racetrack. Like the time at Daytona, when Jimmy Spencer told him, if the steering wheel feels too tight and won't turn any more, to put a little more muscle into it. Like the time at Indianapolis, when he realized how a car running behind him could make his vehicle loose without any contact at all. Like when his chief mechanic explained to him that he couldn't play it safe entering and exiting pit road, but had to be right on the NASCAR-mandated speed limit. (Continued)